Individuals, small businesses and major corporations the (“Shipper(s)”) ship billions of parcels every year (small office/home office shippers are referred to as “SOHO” Shippers). Each parcel, also sometimes referred to herein as a package, is shipped by a Shipper using at least one parcel carrier (the “carrier(s)”, or “Carrier(s)”).
Each parcel is characterized by a set of “Parcel Specifications. ”Parcel specifications include but are not limited to such factors as: parcel dimensions, parcel weight, parcel value, parcel value and the like.
Each Shipper is faced with certain shipping requirements and limitations (“Shipping Requirements”), such as the location from which the parcel is to be shipped, time frame within which the particular parcel must arrive at its destination, the ability of the shipper to drop off the parcel, budgetary constraints with regard to the cost of shipping, insurance against loss, delivery notification, loss protection, and the like.
Each Carrier has its own unique rating schedule, and delivery and pickup rules and schedules for each of a multitude of different services. In some cases, a particular Carrier's rules may be available in a standalone Carrier-provided paper-based or computer system. Many Shippers attempt to work with each of the standalone, individual paper-based and computer Carrier-provided systems (“standalone Carrier system environment”) in order to ship a parcel.
A Shipper that uses standalone Carrier systems must sort through the various services offered by each carrier and apply each Carrier's rules to determine whether one or more carriers offer a service with which to deliver a particular parcel according to the Shipper's requirements. If the Shipper determines that more than one carrier offers a service with which to deliver a particular parcel according to the Shipper's requirements, then the particular Shipper might additionally be concerned with selecting a carrier and service that provide shipping services at the optimal price.
One of the problems in dealing with standalone Carrier systems is that the Shipper must attempt to apply each Carrier's pricing rules for shipping to a particular parcel in order to gel a preview of rates for shipping the parcel. Each Carrier's pricing rules must be separately applied by the Shipper to a particular parcel's specifications and an origin and a destination zip code in order to preview each Carrier's rates for shipping a particular parcel. Part of the problem of applying each Carrier's pricing rules, is that some Carriers categorize origin and destination zip codes into “Zones”. Different Carriers have different Zone schemes. Therefore, a single zip code can be in one zone for one Carrier, and a completely different zone for another Carrier. Accordingly, some way is needed so that a Shipper only needs to input a single origin zip code and a single destination zip code for shipping a particular package.